Nobody should be surprised that Fascism is on the march across Europe.

.

Recent elections in Germany highlight the continued rise of the far-right amid the contemporary moral bankruptcy of public life.

The Guardian rushed to publish one of its gaslighting ‘analysis’ pieces, hiding in plain sight their anti-democratic sentiment:

This is classic establishment chatter, democracy is championed only when it delivers the right results (a la Macron) but presenting this power struggle as a battle between moral agendas is propaganda.

Berlin based Hanno Hauenstein berated ‘mainstream’ German political parties for condoning the far right’s anti-migrant narrative about the Solingen knife attack, his thesis being that far-right gains reflected this wrong moral signal. No mention was made of Gaza.

Surely the staunch German support for Israel’s contemporary holocaust in Palestine sends a far more powerful moral signal? Hauenstein dare not join up the dots between the German far-right, Israeli fascists and the mass murder of Palestinians because to do so would risk arrest and career ruin. The German abuse of peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters is well documented and in stark contrast to the light touch policing of Neo-Nazi rallies.

We are herd animals and actions speak louder than words. Western populaces have become accustomed to their politicians and media dehumanising others when it suits the agendas of empire.

Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Venezuela, Russia, China and of course Palestine – the othering of foreign cultures underwrites the West’s vast military spending and complete disregard for morality and international law.

The ‘centre’ has weaponised racism in service of Western geo-political gambits for decades and must now navigate the moral landscape they helped to create.

Using explicit racism to outlank the establishment is an open goal for those who ache to replace the usual suspects inside the velvet rope, the ‘centre’ has responded by becoming more explicitly racist themselves so as to reposition the ‘centre’ and retain control.

The historical precedents for a politics that floats free of universal moral standards like this ought to be obvious, particularly in Germany. In a system that has come to eschew morality as an inconvenient obstacle to the gathering of power for its own sake, I see little prospect of heading off a fascist turn.

That the political elites of Europe now find a fascist gun pointed toward their heads should surprise no-one. Acting as vassal states of the U.S. has hollowed out the post WW2 consensus against racism and war-mongering, while the consequences were once in far away lands, now they are coming home.

The current political power struggle in Europe is between an immoral and racist establishment and an upstart insurgency. The only difference between them is how explicit the racism is.

The Guardian’s ‘analysis’ frets that “the European project faces a rocky few years”.

That forecast may go down in history as one of the most galactic understatements of modern times. A bloc of nation states that deploys racism to secure and retain political control, will inevitably turn on itself in the end.